Seasonal Sips: Nesselrode Pie cocktail

Nesselrode Pie could be considered a forgotten pleasure. The cream pie, containing the essential ingredient chestnut purée, was named after Count Karl R. Nesselrode, a 19th-century Russian statesman. It makes an appearance in the gastronomic encyclopedia Larousse Gastronomique but you may have a hard time finding it in today’s bakeries. The creamy, fruity chestnut dessert proved to be an appropriate parallel for this cocktail recipe, courtesy of bartenders Ally Martin and Emily O’Brien of Hi-Lo Bar in Toronto.

The recipe is a collaboration between the two, and features Martin’s homemade apricot butter. Martin often incorporates homemade preserves into her cocktails, such as blueberry, elderberry and rhubarb syrups, apple, apricot and peach butters, and sweet and sour plums. “The apricot butter is amazing because it’s smooth and has a nice, delicate texture. It’s nice if [preserves] have some kind of acid to them also, just to balance the cocktail,” she says in an interview. “Often I like to think of cooking, as does Emily. She makes a lot of drinks that taste like pies and this collaboration between the two of us is essentially a pie in liquid form.”

The Nesselrode Pie cocktail was developed for a regular Hi-Lo Bar customer, and the prerequisite was that it be bourbon-based. Martin explains that she doesn’t dry shake the egg white because the aim is to emulsify the citrus in the apricot butter so that it doesn’t curdle, rather than to achieve froth. “A little bit of Frangelico, chestnut liqueur with cream and finished with a little bit of nutmeg,” Martin says. “It’s delicious.”

1. Pit and halve the apricots. Cook the fruit in a pot with a few tablespoons of water, just enough to prevent scorching at the start of cooking, until it is very soft, 15 to 20 minutes. Pass the fruit through a food mill, and measure the purée. Note the quantity.

3. Bring the fruit-sugar mixture to a boil in a preserving pan, stirring constantly, until sufficiently thickened, roughly 20 minutes after the mixture first boils. To test the consistency, place a teaspoon of the hot butter on a cold saucer. If, after 1 minute in the freezer, the butter leaks liquid around its edge, keep cooking. When it’s ready, ladle the hot preserve into prepared 1/2-pint jars and seal, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes.